Some recent events indicate interesting trends.
1. In Australia, where there is currently a conservative government, the USA had apparently specifically requested Australia not make a Free Trade Agreement with China, so what does this very pro-American government do? Right after the G20 meeting, it signed a FTA agreement with China. The benefits etc are still being argued, but it is clear that Australian Agricultural products will benefit by unfettered access to Chinese markets, and enable the industry to escape the strangle-hold that Australia's grocery duo-oply had on the dairy industry.
2. At the prior APEC meeting in China, all 21 APEC member-nations endorsing the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) - the Chinese vision of an "all inclusive, all-win" trade deal capable of advancing Asia-Pacific cooperation - see South China Morning Post (paywall). The loser was the US-driven, corporate-redacted, fiercely opposed (especially by Japan and Malaysia) 12-nation Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). [See also here .
3. Beijing advanced its blueprint for "all-round connectivity" (in Xi's words) across Asia-Pacific - which implies a multi-pronged strategy. One of its key features is the implementation of the Beijing-based US$50 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank. That's China's response to Washington refusing to give it a more representative voice at the International Monetary Fund than the current, paltry 3.8% of votes (a smaller percentage than the 4.5% held by stagnated France).
4. Beijing and Moscow committed to a second gas mega-deal - this one through the Altai pipeline in Western Siberia - after the initial "Power of Siberia" mega-deal clinched last May.
Reflecting on all that, the Asia Times writer, Pepe Escobar wrote:
this vertiginous flurry of deals and investment had to converge towards the most spectacular, ambitious, ... infrastructure offensive ever attempted: the multiple New Silk Roads - that complex network of high-speed rail, pipelines, ports, fiber optic cables and state of the art telecom that China is already building across the Central Asian stans, linked to Russia, Iran, Turkey and the Indian Ocean, and branching out to Europe all the way to Venice, Rotterdam, Duisburg and Berlin. Now imagine a near future Eurasia as a massive Chinese Silk Belt with, in selected latitudes, a sort of development condominium with Russia.
Link: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-141114.html